Building the Innovation School: Infrastructures for Equity in Today's Classrooms

The book investigates the enchantment with "innovation" and its implications for teaching and learning, arguing that the popular understanding of innovation exacerbates inequality and undermines teacher and student autonomy. It challenges conventional wisdom about how educational transformation unfolds and proposes a framework for "innovating from below" that tailors local innovations to the needs, values, and priorities of students, educators, and the community.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 144 pages
Publication date: 13 May 2022
Publisher: Teachers' College Press

There is no shortage of innovations on offer for schools, with new devices, apps, services, curricular add-ons, and instructional techniques being touted as the solution to the perennial woes of systemic education. This book is an investigation of this enchantment with "innovation" and its implications for everyday teaching and learning, as well as the future of public education. Based on a study of The Innovation School, a public high school organized around makerspaces, design thinking, and personalized technology, the author challenges conventional wisdom about how educational transformation unfolds and argues that the popular understanding of innovation exacerbates inequality and undermines teacher and student autonomy.

Building the Innovation School demonstrates how attending to the infrastructures of innovation leads to educational change that is driven by the interests and values of educators. Repair rather than disruption is the focus, with a commitment to schools that allow all students to flourish.

The book features:

- Shows how specific innovations actually work over time in the everyday life of the classroom.
- Provides resources for breaking through the hype of current (and future) innovations-of-the-day.
- Offers a framework for "innovating from below," tailoring local innovations to the needs, values, and priorities of students, educators, and the community.
- Includes an appendix of resources for teachers and administrators interested in applying the frameworks from the book in their schools and classrooms.

In conclusion, the book offers a critical perspective on the current obsession with innovation in education and provides a roadmap for creating educational change that is truly driven by the interests and values of educators and students. By attending to the infrastructures of innovation, we can create schools that are truly innovative and that allow all students to flourish.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780807766781